An Outside Chance

Photograph by Jennifer L. Pavlovic

Horseback riding in the Colorado Rockies. Dogsledding alongside the Great Lakes. Kayaking through Alaska’s fjords. These adventures are not just for fit, young travelers, according to Wilderness Inquiry, a non-profit group that gives people of all ages and physical capabilities the opportunity to participate in outdoor activities.

This year, the Minnesota-based organization will run about 150 trips to 39 destinations in the United States and abroad. The trips — which last from 3 to 23 days — will include 1,200 people, about one-third of whom have some kind of physical disability.

Along with the trips, Wilderness Inquiry runs free outdoor-skills workshops around the country and provides a host of other programs, such as those designed to teach families who have a member with a disability the skills they need to participate together in outdoor recreational activities.

The group also provides information about the accessibility of outdoor facilities, such as picnic areas and campgrounds. It has just completed a report for the Department of the Interior estimating how much it would cost to make facilities in national parks and on other federal lands easier for disabled people to use.

But it is the organization’s trips that win the most attention. Here, Mike Partridge of Iowa City, who lost the use of his legs in a 1977 rock-climbing accident, participates in a six-day kayaking trip in the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington State. His wheelchair is stored in the center cockpit of the kayak that he shares with another paddler.

Mr. Partridge has also gone dogsledding and cross-country skiing on a Wilderness Inquiry trip to the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota.

The trips, he says, “let me get back in touch with something I really love, that’s deeply important in my life — being outdoors.”